December 17, 2008

NEW YORK – Customers of New York City-based Citibank have lost access to much of their account information because of a computer outage.

Many of the troubled bank's clients haven't been able to retrieve account details online or by telephone since Tuesday afternoon. Others can access only parts of their account profiles.

Citibank telephone representatives say they don't know what caused the outage but technicians are working to fix it. They've been telling customers to call back after Wednesday morning.

A Citibank spokeswoman hasn't replied to a phone message or an e-mail sent after business hours.

Citibank is a division of Citigroup Inc., which is struggling to survive the global financial crisis with billions of dollars in aid from the government.

This type of massive "computer glitch" is almost unheard of. If I were the suspicious type, I would think that CitiBank is so broke, they cannot give anyone any money, so they're feigning a computer glitch as an excuse.

Given the fact their parent corporation, CitiGroup went bust just two weeks ago and got over $300 Billion from the government to prop them up, one would think all is well. Apparently not.